Elvis Mirror Reflection

Eugene Jarecki‘s The King has gotten plenty of praise from this corner. It got me with a mix of insightful social commentary, good music, bittersweet lament and lots of heart — incisive, soulful, thoughtful, a bit sad. Earlier today I spoke with Eugene about Elvis Presley — why didn’t he stand up for the Civil Rights movement in the early ’60s?, did Eugene ever speak with Priscilla on background?, why does the Presley estate refuse to put out a Bluray of Loving You?, etc.

I caught The King a second time last night at the Sunset 5, and was surprised to hear during the q & a that the film has attracted a fair amount of pro-con reaction, some from neutral corners and a lot of it from old-school white guys. In the YouTube comment thread for the trailer, I mean.

Comment #1: “Elvis is and always will be the Greatest of All Time. If Elvis was alive today Elvis would be on the Trump Train…MAGA.”

Comment #2: “This is going to be great 👍I can tell just by the trailer.”

Comment #3: “Wait a second, a film about the world’s best entertainer who served his country and loved America starring Van Jones and Alec Baldwin?? and they’re saying how crappy America is???”;

Comment #4: “I have just watched this on Sky Atlantic in the UK. It’s a brilliant programme and does The King proud”;

Comment #5: “The faces in this documentary, if that’s what it is, don’t even belong in the same film frames with Elvis Presley. No matter what the film is about, I would not see it now, unless of course to further illustrate my point of how the left are working 24/7 to try and destroy anything left that is truly traditional Americana. Elvis had problems, no doubt about that, but he was also everything that the left and most musical entertainers today are not. There are millions and millions of us that know what the left is doing. Let them keep showing the masses just how anti-American they are.”

Comment #6: “It would be nice if all this politically correct cultural appropriation bull shit could be laid to rest.Elvis never stole a thing.But he did give a whole lot to the world with his music.The greatest entertainer that ever drew breath.There will NEVER be another like him.”

I’ve posted a few times about Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (Greenwich, 7.27), a 98-minute doc about Scotty Bowers, the amiable, formerly unsung go-between who wrote about servicing Hollywood’s gay and bisexual community during the ’40s, ’50s and beyond in a six-year-old memoir called “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars.”

I will once again share what I came to believe during the watching of it, which is that Bowers, whose tell-all book has been challenged and mocked and who’s been described here and there as highly imaginative, isn’t lying about anything.

For most of Tyrnauer’s surprisingly intimate, low-key, non-gossipy film is about old Scotty — a 90something, white-haired pack rat who owns two or three homes in the Hollywood hills and lives with a good-natured, seen-and-heard-it-all wife who loves him — and only intermittently about the mostly gay and bi movie stars and celebrities (Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Walter Pidgeon, Vivien Leigh, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, Katharine Hepburn, Noël Coward, James Dean) who regarded Scotty as a trusted pimp and pleasure-giver who could and did set them up with same-sex lovers.

After studying Bowers for 98 minutes and listening to him talk about how terrifying things were for gay and bi actors in the intensely homophobic big-studio era, and considering the affection he has for his old gay friends and the strong feelings and immense respect they have for him…after the film is over you’ll probably be convinced, as I was, that Scotty is no bullshitter.

Last Friday (6.15) was the 30th anniversary of the nationwide debut of Bull Durham. And in a gesture of stunning arrogance and indifference Criterion’s notorious teal-tinted Bluray is coming out three weeks hence (July 10th). There’s no reason to presume that Gary W. Tooze‘s DVD Beaver frame captures are anything but accurate, and really…what a ludicrous joke of a color scheme. If Bull Durham dp Bobby Byrne was still with us (he passed last year) he’d say to the Criterion guys, “Good heavens, what the hell are you doing?” For the last time Kevin Costner or director Ron Shelton need to persuade Criterion to remaster Bull Durham correctly. I’ll say no more after this. If nothing changes I’ll never buy their damn Bluray, that’s for sure.

Next week Fox Home Entertainment’s Schawn Belston and James Finn are presenting a special 70mm screening of James Cameron‘s The Abyss (’89). I asked if they’re showing the original 140-minute theatrical version or the 171-minute special edition (i.e., the version that ends with shots of huge tidal waves) — no answer thus far.

I began to recall The Abyss in detail after receiving the invite. I can’t attend due to a screening conflict (the Sicario: Day of the Soldado all-media in Burbank) but even if I could I’m not sure I’d be all that enthused. It’s been 29 years, but I have two strong recollections: (a) The first two thirds are fairly riveting but (b) the last third drops the ball, especially when Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio is brought back to life by Ed Harris after clearly drowning, and especially that dippy ending with the aquatic alien butterflies.

There’s never been a Bluray of either version of The Abyss, and you can’t stream them in high-def. Abyss Wikipage: “In July 2016, while promoting the 30th anniversary Bluray release of Aliens at Comic-Con, Cameron confirmed that he was working on a remastered 4K transfer of The Abyss and that it would be released on Bluray for the first time in early 2017. ‘We’ve done a wet-gate 4K scan of the original negative, and it’s going to look insanely good,’ Cameron said.” Okay, but something kept this from happening.

The hilarious part about Vertical Entertainment’s “hit back at the critics” ad is the chanting of the crowd…”GottEE!, GottEE!, GottEE!” Presumably the makers had to round up a few people to stand in front of a mike and chant. Were they professional actors (doubtful) or Vertical Entertainment employees or…? I wish I knew the story behind this.

Audiences loved Gotti but critics don’t want you to see it… The question is why? Trust the people and see it for yourself! pic.twitter.com/K6a9jAO4UH

— Gotti Film (@Gotti_Film) June 19, 2018

It would appear that Ari Aster‘s Hereditary, the smarthouse horror flick that opened 12 days ago, is doing reasonably well despite that notorious D-plus CinemaScore grade.

Boilerplate horror fans put it down, but an obviously sizable contingent of “blue state” viewers have kept things going. The current domestic gross is $27,016,183 — underwhelming by big-studio standards but the second-highest grosser in A24’s six-year history.

A24’s most popular film to date is Greta Gerwig‘s Lady Bird, which has earned a bit less than $49 million domestic and a worldwide haul of $76,858,273.

Video posted three days ago: Last Wednesday night (6.13) a Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles performance of Henry IV came to a screeching halt because an audience member was “suffering from a hydration issue,” according to a Playbill description. (An audience member lost consciousness because of insufficient water intake?) To keep things going during the delay, star Tom Hanks ad-libbed for several minutes. Hats off. Henry IV, performing at West L.A.’s Japanese Garden, will continue through July 1.

It’s not so much what N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman has said in his latest (6.18) essay, although his conclusions about the ways in which Donald Trump has downgraded our country’s reputation and is ignoring or undermining traditional values certainly inspire alarm.

It’s the fact that Krugman has titled the piece “Fall of the American Empire,” which conveys a glum air of resignation while sounding like a Samuel Bronston film.

First two paragraphs: “The U.S. government is, as a matter of policy, literally ripping children from the arms of their parents and putting them in fenced enclosures (which officials insist aren’t cages, oh no). The U.S. president is demanding that law enforcement stop investigating his associates and go after his political enemies instead. He has been insulting democratic allies while praising murderous dictators. And a global trade war seems increasingly likely.

“What do these stories have in common? Obviously they’re all tied to the character of the man occupying the White House, surely the worst human being ever to hold his position. But there’s also a larger context, and it’s not just about Donald Trump. What we’re witnessing is a systematic rejection of longstanding American values — the values that actually made America great.”

For a scene in his currently filming Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino recently re-dressed the Cinerama Dome with advertising for Bernard L. Kowalski‘s Krakatoa, East of Java, a stinker disaster flick that opened on May 14, 1969. It was only up for a single day, I’m told — last Tuesday (6.12).

“Which is worse? A heartless, soulless blockbuster with no wit, intelligence or shelf life, designed solely to milk money from moviegoers in the quickest and most cynical way possible? Or a film which presents itself to be a poignant, intelligent, moving work of art, only to emerge as a bloated, pretentious, self-indulgent piece of crap? For most of us, the obvious answer is the former. But that all changes once you’ve seen The Deer Hunter.

“At the risk of slowly making myself unpopular, let me be perfectly clear from the outset. The Deer Hunter is a truly hateful film, a badly-written, badly-directed, poorly-acted piece of garbage, at turns boring, racist, mawkish, churlish, pretentious and manipulative. It is in a very select group of films which are almost unendurable due to length, structure, tone and content. It is an utterly hollow experience which leaves its audience somewhere between slipping into a coma and erupting into blind fury.” — Daniel Mumby, Three Men on a Blog, posted on 12.9.10.

I haven’t asked to see the opening episodes of Taylor Sheridan‘s Yellowstone (Paramount Network, 6.20), the sprawling, Montana-shot, big-ranch, family-conflict drama starring Kevin Costner, but I can at least convey that it’s gotten creamed by the critics — 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, 62% on Metacritic. I wouldn’t dare to summarize, but there are gripes galore.

I’ve finally figured out that on Direct TV, the Paramount Network is channel #241 so I guess I’ll tune in. Maybe. We’ll see.

Costner plays the somewhat taciturn John Dutton, a half-tough, half-laid-back Big Daddy brah in a black cowboy hat. Weary hangs the bison head. Everybody wants a piece of his land or his soul, some more than others. His four grown children, corporate developers, Native American activists, Montana politicians. It’s that kind of ensemble.

“Expensive to look at, painfully slow, lovingly violent, overly dedicated to uncovering the secret sadness lingering in the heart of murderous egomaniacs, generally pointless.”

I’ve read seven or eight reviews so far, and my favorite is by EW.com’s Darren Franich. That’s where the above line is from. I’d go so far as to call his review hilarious.

Three of the four Dutton children are “dangerously boring,” Franich notes. “The fourth is Beth, a man-eating boozehound tycoon played with Sin City hyperbole by Kelly Reilly.

“I’m watching the second episode, and John’s son Kayce (Luke Grimes) has just discovered dinosaur bones in his backyard.

“He discovered them because there was a tree stump on his property that was bothering him, and he tried to pull it out with a tractor, and then he just used dynamite. And now John himself is here, theorizing that the dinosaur was probably killed by a prehistoric shark. One thing I wasn’t expecting was Kevin Costner talking about dinosaur-eating sharks.

“Strange things keep happening to Kayce. Later in episode 2, he’s going for a drive with his wife (Kelsey Asbille), and they’re driving by a random house, and that house explodes. ‘Meth lab’s my guess,’ Kayce drawls, as he runs toward the explosion. So now Yellowstone is just a show where houses blow up sometimes.

From Todd McCarthy’s THR Sundance review, filed on 1.24.18: “The first thing people will always say about Searching (Screen Gems, 8.3) is, ‘Oh, yeah, the film that’s completely set on a computer screen.’ But if it were just that, it would be far from enough.

“Impressively, first-time filmmaker and former Google commercials creator Aneesh Chaganty has also made a real movie, the story of a family that morphs into a crime drama that gradually ratchets up the tension as all good thrillers must, one that’s well constructed and acted as well as novel in its storytelling techniques.

“[The pic] is like spending a little over an hour-and-a-half on the internet, except that a mind perhaps more wily than yours is organizing your online voyage. Early on you’re made to feel that you’re in good hands, such is the technical and dramatic expertise Chaganty, co-writer Sev Ohanian, editors Will Merrick and Nick Johnson (what a job they must have had!) and the rest of the team pour into this novel enterprise.

“Unavoidably, perhaps, Search starts feeling more like a conventional suspense film once the deep probe for information on the internet is over and the film enters real time and a possible resolution; there are a lot of present-tense cutaways to TV coverage and a reliance upon surveillance coverage cameras. By this time, too, some of the novelty has also begun to wear off, but there are a couple of good twists in a plot that’s pretty solid strictly from a crime story point of view.

“In all respects, what Chaganty and his team have pulled off here is something both novel and accomplished.” Rotten Tomatoes, 100%, Metacritic 81%.